The Storm Lake Times - Immigrantshttp://www.stormlake.com/tags/immigrants
enCharter school renewedhttp://www.stormlake.com/articles/2014/03/12/charter-school-renewed
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><span style="font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">The Storm Lake School Board and administration breathed a sigh of relief last week when the Iowa Board of Education renewed for another four years our unique charter school. The state essentially indicated that it is amenable to local solutions that do not necessarily follow the dominant education matrix employed for more than a century.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">Storm Lake, infused with immigrants from around the globe, realized long ago that its students needed more time in a structured environment to help them succeed on their own. It takes longer for some students to master English, or to use their new-found language skills to master other academic areas. <span class="pullquote">The charter school helps answer the concern: Students attend Storm Lake High School for five years instead of four and get their first year of college or vo-tech school under their belts at no additional cost.</span> Many of the 500 students who have matriculated through the charter school would not have attended college or vo-tech school without the charter school.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">The result is that students are moving on to vocational degrees through Iowa Central Community College. Storm Lake Schools Supt. Carl Turner notes that Iowa Central prepares young men and women for the jobs available within 40 miles of Storm Lake. Many first-generation immigrants want to take jobs close to the family who got them here. Technical skills may work better for most of these students than a four-year degree. Turner himself wishes he had taken a few plumbing courses instead of oddball education courses in graduate school.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">Storm Lake is only one of three charter schools in the state. Ours grew out of the old League of Schools, a consortium of local school districts that came together to offer first-rate vo-tech courses to high school students in Storm Lake. It led naturally into the venture among Storm Lake, Iowa Central and Buena Vista University.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">The idea of a five-year or six-year high school is coming into vogue. Time Magazine featured the concept in January. It helps prevent dropouts, shows students that they can have a good job with technical education, and leads other students to explore college further once they have their sea legs.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">That’s the basic message the state board heard from the Storm Lake delegation last week.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">Letters from local employers in praise of the charter school were the key to showing the state board that the program works.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">Students themselves testified how it helped vault them forward.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">What works in Des Moines or Burlington or Sheldon might not work in Storm Lake. But what works well here might be a model for Midwestern communities struggling with influxes of newcomers — places like Denison, Worthington, Minn., or Marshalltown. The charter school is helping build better citizens climbing the economic ladder. With all the talk of income inequality, the greatest leveler of all is education.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">Because Storm Lake is trying to hard to help new Americans, colleges are reaching out. Buena Vista University is enrolling more students of color, many of them from Storm Lake, every year. The University of Iowa has created a “Storm Lake Scholars” program offering up to 10 full-ride scholarships to first-generation students. We spotted Iowa Central Center Director Dan Anderson chatting up the charter school at lunch last week with an admissions executive from the University of Northern Iowa.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">The charter school is an important component of Storm Lake succeeding and growing as a community. We’re glad the state recognizes that prosperity comes in varied colors down different paths. We’re charting the right course.</span></span></p>
<hr /><p><span style="font-size:16px;"><strong><span style="font-family: georgia, serif;">It’s just that easy</span></strong></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">The sales pitch might have worked. A forthcoming graduate of Drake University in Des Moines, who hails from Chicago, has a job offer in Storm Lake. Her other choices were another small town in Iowa and one in northern California. She visited The City Beautiful on Sunday and stopped by for a chat. We didn’t wait for her to ask about our hometown, we just started in on the pitch:</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">“You are interested in a diverse population. This is the most diverse city in the Upper Midwest, bar none. You have a working knowledge of Spanish, and you want to become fluent. This is the place.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">“We have the best ethnic restaurants in a three-state area. You can go Thai, Lao, Chinese, Greek, Italian, Tex-Mex, traditional Mexican or Americana.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">“This is one of the cheapest places to live in the USA. You can buy a palace in a small town for the price of a new car. If you live downtown, you can get a great deal on rent and never have to drive a car. Your insurance rates will be appreciably lower.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">“The lake sets the tone for the community. When you see it, you relax. That sort of sets the pace in Storm Lake. There is no rat-race. Buena Vista University is loaded with cultural events.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">“We were born here, left and decided to come back as adults. So we hope you move here.”</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">She said she would.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">It was an easy sell.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/ArtSignature.png" style="width: 213px; height: 64px;" /></span></span></p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/art-cullen">Art Cullen</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/editorial">Editorial</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/charter-school">Charter School</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/iowa-board-education">Iowa Board of Education</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/storm-lake">Storm Lake</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/iowa-central-community-college">Iowa Central Community College</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/immigrants">Immigrants</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/jobs">Jobs</a></div></div></div>Wed, 12 Mar 2014 14:21:13 +0000clare@stormlake.com3206 at http://www.stormlake.comUnited Methodist Women encourage a welcoming churchhttp://www.stormlake.com/articles/2014/03/11/united-methodist-women-encourage-welcoming-church
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><span style="font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">The fourth event in a series called “Welcoming the Stranger” is sponsored by the Iowa Annual Conference United Methodist Women at Storm Lake UMC, 211 E. Third St., on Saturday, March 29.</span></p><div class="premium-message"><p>Full text available to subscribers only. If you are currently an online subscriber, you can login <a href="/user">here</a>. To subscribe, please follow <a href="/content/subscribe">this link</a>.</p>
</div></div></div></div>Tue, 11 Mar 2014 14:42:38 +0000clare@stormlake.com3177 at http://www.stormlake.comPolice chiefs urge driver cards for state immigrantshttp://www.stormlake.com/articles/2014/02/04/police-chiefs-urge-driver-cards-state-immigrants
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">People without licenses more likely to be in accidents, SL’s Prosser says</span></p>
<p> </p>
<p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">By JOEY AGUIRRE</span></p>
<p> </p>
<p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">Police chiefs and sheriffs across the state of Iowa are starting the discussion about issuing immigrant drivers a temporary card as a form of driver’s license.</span></p><div class="premium-message"><p>Full text available to subscribers only. If you are currently an online subscriber, you can login <a href="/user">here</a>. To subscribe, please follow <a href="/content/subscribe">this link</a>.</p>
</div></div></div></div>Tue, 04 Feb 2014 22:54:19 +0000admin2765 at http://www.stormlake.comA bold offer http://www.stormlake.com/articles/2013/10/02/bold-offer
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><span style="font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; ">It all began with a short description of Storm Lake’s next generation: About 75% are children of color, of immigrants, whose families only dream of them realizing the American Dream. Going to college. Owning a home. Doing better than your parents and grandparents did. Remembering where you came from and giving back. Too many of our youth do not know how far they can reach in America if we only let them.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; ">University of Iowa President Sally Mason responded quickly and without reservation:</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; ">“It looks to me like we’re missing an opportunity, and we’re going to fix that. … We hear what your challenges are.”</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; ">The Hawkeye in Chief said she will personally dispatch an enrollment team to Storm Lake to meet with young people of ambition and sort through what their options might be: community college, state university, private university or military service.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; ">Mason said there will be no bar to enrolling at the U of I but for the ties that bind sincere students to their families in Storm Lake. Needy students will get what they need to succeed, she promised.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; ">She was the first of her family, Slovak stock displaced by World War I, to attend college. Her immigrant father made it through eighth grade. Mason said she holds a special place for first-generation collegians.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; ">We found her to be sincere and resolute.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; ">Mason is reaching out her hand to those looking for a hand up. It becomes our challenge to respond.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; ">Lots of immigrant children are sampling the fares at Iowa Central Community College, either while in high school or after graduation. Buena Vista University is actively recruiting local students of color, realizing that it has an edge with close family ties typical of first-generation newcomers. But BVU might not work for all students. State universities play an important role, as well. They are, after all, the people’s colleges.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; ">Storm Lake and Buena Vista County need trained welders and machinists, nurses and HVAC specialists. But it also needs finance majors and CPAs, lawyers and doctors, pharmacists and teachers. We need state university graduates who want to come home and build a future. Immigrant college grads are the most likely candidates.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; ">Mason has opened a door by pledging the full resources of the university to help Storm Lake students of need get a degree from a great academic institution. Let’s make certain those students are lined up when the team comes calling.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:16px;"><strong><span style="font-family: georgia, serif; ">Never enough</span></strong></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; ">The federal government was about to shut down when this was written. Buried in the news Monday was that the farm bill was set to expire that night, Sept. 30. Reports — confusing as the norm — coming out of Washington were that Congress would punt the farm bill to October. It is most likely that the current farm bill, already extended a year by a dysfunctional House, will be extended for another year or two or whenever Congress can get its act together.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; ">That’s about all the clarity we could divine.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; ">The farm bill speaks to the nature of government in Washington.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; ">The right demands reduced spending. The Senate and White House agree, but the House wants 10 times as much in the next negotiation. That is precisely what happened with the farm bill. The Senate passed a bill with big cuts in conservation and nutrition titles. The House wanted cuts 10 times as large.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; ">We have record amounts of soil rushing into the Raccoon River. The shelves at Upper Des Moines Food Pantry often go bare, prompting emergency pleas. But the right-wing ideologues refuse to relent. They would rather not pass a farm bill than compromise with a broadly bipartisan Senate approach.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; ">Extending the current farm bill is the backwards way to go. Think about how crop science and renewable energy have evolved in five years. Think about how much markets have changed in five years. And, five years ago the federal budget deficit built by two foreign wars was growing. The deficit has been shrinking the past two years.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; ">The Senate and White House had offered to continue the budget sequestration program as part of a deal to avoid a government shutdown or a crisis over the debt ceiling. That suggests another 12% reduction in federal spending this year on top of the 5% already cut. The Senate and White House have been negotiating away the social safety net for the past four years. And it’s never enough for the House.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; ">The farm bill is a perfect example. Heaven help us if they can’t get it figured out.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; "><img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/ArtSignature.png" style="width: 213px; height: 64px; " /></span></span></p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/editorial">Editorial</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/art-cullen">Art Cullen</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/sally-mason">Sally Mason</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/immigrants">Immigrants</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/farm-bill">Farm Bill</a></div></div></div>Wed, 02 Oct 2013 14:05:10 +0000clare@stormlake.com1126 at http://www.stormlake.comUI President Mason pledges to recruit immigrants from SLhttp://www.stormlake.com/articles/2013/09/27/ui-president-mason-pledges-recruit-immigrants-sl
<div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/articles/2013/09/27/ui-president-mason-pledges-recruit-immigrants-sl"><img src="http://www.stormlake.com/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/field/image/sally968.jpg" width="220" height="216" alt="" /></a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="font-size:16px;"><em><strong>Many could get a full ride in Iowa City, she maintains</strong></em></span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">By ART CULLEN</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">University of Iowa President Sally Mason told The Storm Lake Times that she will personally see to it that an admissions team is dispatched to Storm Lake to recruit at least 10 students of color to Iowa City next fall.</span></p><div class="premium-message"><p>Full text available to subscribers only. If you are currently an online subscriber, you can login <a href="/user">here</a>. To subscribe, please follow <a href="/content/subscribe">this link</a>.</p>
</div></div></div></div>Fri, 27 Sep 2013 13:47:28 +0000admin1085 at http://www.stormlake.comKing relentless on Latino ‘muling’ talkhttp://www.stormlake.com/articles/2013/07/30/king-relentless-latino-%E2%80%98muling%E2%80%99-talk
<div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/articles/2013/07/30/king-relentless-latino-%E2%80%98muling%E2%80%99-talk"><img src="http://www.stormlake.com/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/field/image/220px-Steve_King_Official.jpg" width="173" height="220" alt="" /></a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><em><strong><span style="font-size:16px;">He takes his case to Fox News</span></strong></em></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">By JOEY AGUIRRE</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">Rep. Steve King, R-Kiron, defended his statements about immigration Saturday in an interview with Fox News.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;">He’s not backing down despite criticism all around, including Republican House Speaker John Boehner and Gov. Terry Branstad.</span></p><div class="premium-message"><p>Full text available to subscribers only. If you are currently an online subscriber, you can login <a href="/user">here</a>. To subscribe, please follow <a href="/content/subscribe">this link</a>.</p>
</div></div></div></div>Tue, 30 Jul 2013 21:40:40 +0000admin517 at http://www.stormlake.comKing builds his strength with drug runner broadsidehttp://www.stormlake.com/articles/2013/07/30/king-builds-his-strength-drug-runner-broadside
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>By ART CULLEN</p>
<p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="font-size:14px;">Democrats are smacking their toothless gums. Republicans are squirming. Religious leaders sit on their vestments. Latinos say “Que sera.”</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><span style="font-size:14px;">Steve King is having a ball.</span></span></p><div class="premium-message"><p>Full text available to subscribers only. If you are currently an online subscriber, you can login <a href="/user">here</a>. To subscribe, please follow <a href="/content/subscribe">this link</a>.</p>
</div></div></div></div>Tue, 30 Jul 2013 14:43:49 +0000clare@stormlake.com506 at http://www.stormlake.com